IoT news of the week for March 17, 2023

Qualcomm releases 5G modules designed to work in the IoT: At Embedded World Qualcomm released new integrated 5G modules that support four operating systems found in the IoT. The new processors will support Linux, Ubuntu, Microsoft Windows IoT Enterprise, and Android. Qualcomm also introduced two new processors designed for robotics with general compute, AI-specific accelerators, and wireless modems. The platforms both have built-in support for machine vision support for up to three cameras and can provide on-chip processing to meld camera and sensor data for features like autonomous navigation. (Qualcomm) — Stacey Higginbotham

This product from My Voice AI sounds really neat: I wasn’t at Embedded World and for the first time I regret it, because apparently TinyML was all the rage including what sounds like a neat demo from a company called My Voice AI. According to Embedded.com the company showed off on-device voice recognition for use in access control. I’m not sure how well it performs, especially given all of the voice deepfakes leading to hacks right now, but I wish I had seen the demo myself. As a bonus, this links to the first day video overview of the show. It’s a nice overview, as are the other videos covering Day 2 and Day 3. (Embedded.com) — Stacey Higginbotham

Brazil prevents the Flipper Zero hacker tool from entering the country: The Flipper Zero is a user-friendly hacking tool designed to let users infiltrate wireless networks and scan RFID devices. The marketing for the device emphasizes that it’s good for security projects and penetration testing, but the Brazilian government has decided it could be used to hack security systems, doorbells, and other devices and so has redirected shipments of the device to its telecommunications regulator arguing that the tool violates wireless regulations. (Bleeping Computer) — Stacey Higginbotham

Technology will solve multiple woes in the manufacturing industry: Rockwell Automation’s latest smart manufacturing report is out and offers a unique perspective because it quizzes executives about their manufacturing businesses’ internal and external risks. The top internal risk is balancing quality and growth followed by deploying new technology, while the top external risk is inflation followed by managing the supply chain. Surprisingly, manufacturers (97%) plan to use technology to mitigate some of these risks. When addressing internal risks, technology adoption will help minimize disruption from workforce or supply issues (53%) and help shift their operations to the cloud to reduce cybersecurity risk and risks to business continuity (50%). When it comes to external risks like inflation, supply chain, and workforce shortages, survey respondents also believed technology would help. (Rockwell Automation) — Stacey Higginbotham

OQ Technology will launch 7 more satellites this year: I know that Amazon’s Project Kuiper and SpaceX’s Starlink constellations are measured in the thousands of satellites, but those are small sats designed to provide high-bandwidth, contiguous coverage. OQ, a company that I profiled a little over a year ago, is trying to build a network for low-data rate devices that just want to update sensors every few hours or so. The company currently has three satellites, but has announced its plans to launch seven more this year, which will give it greater global coverage and the ability to send more messages. The OQ technology makes satellite service look like traditional NB-IoT service for trackers or other sensors, which means that end devices don’t need special modules, so that reduces their cost. (OQ Technology) — Stacey Higginbotham

Belkin WeMo says “no” to Matter: You’d think that after three years of waiting for Matter we’d see more device makers adopt the smart home standard. Unfortunately, that has not come to pass. For example, WeMo, the Belkin company, this week said it was instead going to “take a big step back, regroup, and rethink” its smart home strategy. In other words, although the company announced future Matter support at the 2022 CES event, it’s not coming any time soon. I wondered about this several months back when WeMo introduced a new light switch without Matter support or saying it would add it down the road. It appears the company can’t find a way to differentiate its products from its competitors, likely because Matter will commoditize many smart home devices. (The Verge) — Kevin C. Tofel

Reordering your favorite devices in Google Home is near: There’s good news for Google Home users this week in the form of a beta update of Google’s mobile smart home app that gives them the ability to reorder their favorite devices. This is something that really should have been there ages ago; I consider it to be basic functionality in any smart home ecosystem. Better late than never, I guess! Google announced in December that it was working on this functionality with plans to deliver it in the first half of 2023. So even if you don’t see the reorder option now, it should arrive soon. (9to5 Google) — Kevin C. Tofel

Future voice assistants might not need to hear your voice at all: Tired of your smart speaker thinking you said the magic wake word and randomly starting to talk to you? That could be a thing of the past if a research project from the University of Tokyo proves successful. The project is called SottoVoce and the idea is to let users communicate silently to a listening device. Wait, silently? How does that work? Your non-spoken speech is captured through a wearable ultrasonic sensor to sense movement of your larynx. The captured data is then interpreted as your spoken word, even though you didn’t make a sound. It’s a clever approach and the research team already has a video showing off how this works with an unmodified Amazon Echo device. (HackADay) — Kevin C. Tofel